


Scenes from Yavin IV

by gondalsqueen



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: F/M, Family Dynamics, Friendship, Gen, Homesickness, M/M, Post-Episode: s03e21-22 Zero Hour, Pre-Season/Series 04, Slice of Life, Yavin 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-14
Updated: 2017-07-18
Packaged: 2018-12-01 21:35:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11495217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gondalsqueen/pseuds/gondalsqueen
Summary: After Atollon, before the next disaster, they have five minutes to breathe and look around and think about their family.





	1. In Their Wake

**Author's Note:**

> All of these chapters are short. Might as well get something posted just before it's jossed/filonied instead of just after, right?

Naveen is working the morning shift on deck when the survivors of the Atollon disaster arrive. He’s on runway eight, and in the one instance of dumb luck in his entire life, he gets to flag in the Ghost. The GHOST.

He tells himself he’s never seen a more precise landing, although they have plenty of room and a straight platform and the whole thing doesn’t require much finesse. Then the soldiers troop off and there they ARE.

Kanan Jarrus, who fought and defeated three Inquisitors and blew up a Star Destroyer from the inside while being held prisoner. Garazeb Orrellios, over two meters tall and strangely not as angry or fearsome as Naveen had thought. They say he lifted a TIE fighter off the ground once. That astromech droid—Chopper? Rumor has it that he keeps a kill log of Stormtroopers as a hobby. Hera Syndulla, whose name terrifies Imperial pilots. Ezra Bridger, who ran the unbreakable blockade twice, without whom nobody would have escaped. And Sabine Wren, even more shockingly bright than he’d expected, a real-life holo-comic heroine, no exaggeration needed.  

News travels faster than spaceships.

They are HERE on YAVIN IV, and it would be completely inappropriate to ask for autographs. And also, he’s a little afraid of the things that usually follow in their wake.


	2. Homeward

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No matter what she does, Sabine has to leave somewhere behind.

It doesn’t break Sabine’s heart to turn around and leave, but it does squeeze her chest so tight she’d rather not think about the problem.

“My mother needs our help,” she says. “I have to go home.” And Kanan tells her, “It’s all right. We understand,” and Hera says, “I know. Just see us to the new base first.” _So you’ll know where to find us if you need us_ they leave unspoken.

She’s off again as soon as they land. Chopper bangs an arm against her leg to make sure he has her full attention, then waves a vigorous goodbye. (“Hey, Chop. I’ll see you soon.”) Hera and Kanan hug her too tight. Ezra offers his hand awkwardly, so she laughs at him and gives him a hug, too. Then she shoves him in the shoulder because he’s too tall for her to pick up off the ground anymore. And then Zeb picks her up in the air and tosses her roughly. (“Bet you miss that jet pack now, huh? Bye, Sabine. Don’t be a stranger.”) And she stands. And stands.

Her squadron is in the transport ship waiting for her. Better rip the bacta patch off quickly. “Well…bye, guys.”

She misses them so much, and she really wants to stay. But they don’t need her here, and she has real work to do at Krownest. If she goes back, if she succeeds, she can bring a whole army to the Rebellion, maybe even do some good for Mandalore. Staying would just be indulgent.

Things are different back at home though. More regimented. It’s a comfortable, old routine; she knows that discipline in her bones, but… she’s also used to the freedom now. She thought she’d grown up, that freedom and acceptance came to you and stayed when you learned to master yourself. And back home things are still…old, while she’s young.

So she starts a painting in her mind during the boring hyperspace trip, something to capture that feeling. Something abstract—shapes and colors, blocks and circles. A bird, a wolf. When she begins to sketch it, though, she realizes that the whole thing is second rate, derivative of her old TIE fighter.  She can’t put together an honest painting because she doesn’t want to admit the conflict at its heart—with two homes, she’ll always be homesick.

At Krownest she only paints in her room, and that makes it seem like something furtive and private. Imagine what would happen if her mother were to wake up one day and find the throne room gory with color, the messy, blurry lines of spray paint everywhere. No. That’s not going to fly.

On the Ghost, she sort of wasn’t supposed to paint anything without permission, but really she was allowed. Hera would just look at it with that wry smile that meant she was actually impressed and ask, “ON the refrigeration unit, Sabine? Are you sure that stuff isn’t toxic?” And Kanan would say, “Hey, that looks really good! Wonder why nobody else thought to use that thing for a canvas?”

…Or at least he would have, a year ago.

She loves her mother and her brother and her people. She’s Mandalorian, through and through. But she left when she was still a child, and she’s going home to a life that doesn’t exactly fit her.

Home, home, home, thrum the ship's engines. What does that even mean anymore?


	3. Seeing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes we can't see, and sometimes we just forget to look.

Hera’s stomping around again, too busy, and something ELSE has come up that needs her attention. Ezra has seen the look a lot over the years. So has Kanan, though he doesn’t need to see it to recognize it anymore.

“What?” Kanan asks her.

“I’ve got to give a pilot’s briefing, and those stupid TIEs blew FOUR of the electromag panels. Completely shot.” She takes a deep breath and problem solves. “Would you pull them out and replace them while I’m gone?”

“I don’t mind…but…”

“Thanks, love.” She squeezes his hand, and it’s off to find something in her bunk before the briefing.

“But Hera—” he calls her.

“The panels!” her voice comes back to them.

“Four of them. Yeah. But come look at them for one minute and tell me exactly what you want me to do.”

She emerges, datapad in hand, and gives him that exasperated look, he’s sure of it. “Replace the four panels that are burned out with ones that aren’t.”

“Okay, but if you don’t like the way I do it you’re going to be annoyed and make me fix them all over again, so will you please come LOOK at it with me?”

She checks the chronometer on her data pad. “I don’t have time. You’ll be fine, dear. I don’t think any of the turbines are damaged.” And then she’s gone.

Ezra hops down from his perch on a stack of crates. “She just didn’t think about it, Kanan.”

“Yeah, she has a lot on her mind.”

“You want me to look and tell you which ones are all carbon-scored?”

“Thanks.”


	4. Flora and Fauna

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's nice to know that, deep down where it matters, Chopper never changes.

Chopper hates this place. It’s crawling with the three worst things: Vegetation, which poses a real danger to his circuitry and is ugly. People, who think they can send him to fetch their things all day long. And other droids, who for some unfathomable reason think they have the right to talk to him.

He details his list of complaints to Ezra Bridger, because Bridger is nearby and therefore capable of hearing him. YavinIVbase == dirty. YavinIVbase  =! competence OR style.

“Come on,” Ezra Bridger wheedles. “This is way better than those giant spider things trying to eat you.”

Spiders =! EAT inorganics. Large dangerous creatures > small creatures. Small creatures PENETRATE gears.

“Well, I like it here.”

YavinIVbase < Chopperbase

“Oh, THAT’S what it is. You found the other base. Sorry, buddy, that’s your 15 minutes of fame. The Empire blew it up and now you’re just another grunt like the rest of us.”

C1-10P SHOW Spectre6 grunt. Punch in gut == sufficient to INDUCE grunting.

“What?”

A stream of ants troops up a nearby tree with droid-like efficiency. Chopper doesn’t deign to answer. Instead, he activates his blowtorch and begins to eradicate the menaces.

Bridger, as usual, takes a freakish interest in all things animal. “What are you…? Hey! Chopper! Knock it off.”

Insect life < 6 cm == threat to droid circuitry.

“I don’t think you’re going to be able to kill all the ants in the forest. Chop. Enough!” Ezra Bridger wheels him backward.

Chopper sends extra power to his booster turbines and wheels himself forward.

“You’re going to start a forest fire!”

Fire REDUCE vegetation AND droids AND humans.

“Yeah, I know!”

Fire ACCOMPLISH all C1-10P directives.

“Put the blowtorch away or I’m going to drain your fuel.”

Chopper puts the torch away, but not without grumbling: Ezra Bridger =! KNOW his place.  

“Pretty sure my place is Lieutenant Comman—HEY!”

A small, mammalian creature has launched from a nearby tree and landed on Ezra Bridger’s head.

Spectre6 place == squirrel nest.

“I don’t think it’s a squirrel. It’s some kind of…ow! Get off my head! Okay.” Ezra Bridger takes a deep breath, and while Chopper ruminates on the inefficiency of organics’ use of air as fuel, he lowers his heart rate and acquires the physical features that Kanan Jarrus refers to as a “Jedi trance.”

To Chopper’s regret, the creature gradually relaxes its grip and climbs down onto Bridger’s arm.

“See, Chop? He’s not so bad. I’ll bet some of the creatures here could even be allies.”

Chopper considers this suggestion another repulsive feature of this poodoo base. Before he can voice his opinion, though, something catches their attention in the darker underbrush to the side of the path. Hundreds of gleaming points of light. Eyes. Chopper, with his superior sensors, identifies more of the squirrel-creatures, though he doubts Ezra Bridger can see them. Excellent. He can’t keep himself from chortling in delight.

“Chopper…no…don’t… I can calm them down!”

Chopper activates his blowtorch.

YavinIVbase NEED pest control.

“CHOPPER NO!”


	5. Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kanan and Hera make time, but not enough.

Kanan and Hera don’t see each other for days at a time except when they both fall into a bunk exhausted at the end of a work shift. At that point they’re so tired it’s hard not to snap about any little annoyance. Neither one of them likes this situation, but they have work to do.

That’s how it is when Kanan rearranges his schedule to copilot with Hera on a standard cargo run, out to a nearby scrapyard and back.

“I thought you were looking for Jedi relics in the temples,” she says.

“I thought you were training pilots,” he responds.

“Yeah, well, they need all the cargo ships to haul supplies, and the only other person I trust to take the Ghost through this trash heap was doing Jedi things.”

He puts his hands on her shoulders and rubs, but she’s double checking the indicator panels before takeoff and she’s not in the mood for anything but business right now.

His fingers work into her neck. “I just wanted to spend some time with you.”

“There’s no hyperspace leg on this trip,” she tells him, and he stops, hurt.

“Fine. That’s fine. I wasn’t trying to start anything. I just thought you might like the company.”

Ouch. She hadn’t meant it to sound so snappish. “I’m sorry, love. That didn’t come out right. Pull up a copilot’s seat.”

He drops into the chair next to her, calls up a display, and plays music jockey. She wavers between feeling irritated by the noise and charmed by the songs.

First he puts on an old Coruscant Industrial Defense Complex album.  “This?” he asks.

Hera makes a face for her own benefit and says “no” for his. “Something with words.”

So he puts on a Dia Penavi ballad, Dia’s smoky voice weaving a duet with the music from her melodium.

Hera considers. “Pretty, but play something for flying.”

Faster, then. Kanan drums his fingers on the dash for a minute, considering.  Then he dials up “To the Moon and Back.” She hasn’t heard it in five years.

Not one line in they’re belting it at the top of their lungs, just like they used to on these monotonous runs.

Hera misses a phrase, muttering the lyrics until she gets to the end and shouts out “—Moon!”

Kanan grins sideways at her and taunts her with the next line: “Pretty little girl got too tough too soon.” Then he grabs her side, tickling, and she shouts with laughter—partially because she used to think that line was so patronizing, partially because Kanan’s the only one left around who knew her when she _was_ that girl. Also he missed her side and grabbed her shoulder and breast instead, completely by accident, and that’s somehow much funnier.

“Hey, hey!” She tilts the sticks and the ship obediently lolls starboard, tossing Kanan against the far armrest. “Hands off the pilot, now.”

He laughs unrepentantly with that old, brash charm. She’s missed him so much lately.

The album sees them all the way to the debris field. Then Hera needs to pay attention to where they’re going, and Kanan cuts it off.

In the sudden silence, his stomach rumbles.

“Go get something to eat,” she suggests.

“Yeah.” He stands. “You hungry?”

Saliva wells into her mouth. Now is not the time. “Starving. I’ll grab something as soon as we’re past all this junk and docked.”

“Uh huh. I’ll bet you will.”

Still hungry and tired, she’s about to fire back a response, but he makes himself scarce, presumably to the galley.

When he returns, he’s got two giant flatbread rolls.

“Just eat it to the side so I don’t have to look at it,” she tells him.

“I’ve got a better idea.”

“Oh yeah? What’s that?”

He feels for her chin, drawing on the Force to give him a good idea of where she is, and holds a sandwich just in front of her, folds of meat and blue cheese and greenery and some kind of sauce rolled up wider than her mouth. “Still starving?”

As a general rule, Hera doesn’t allow eating in the cockpit. But sometimes she does.

“Yes!” She keeps her eyes on the monitors as she leans forward and takes a bite. “Mmm. That is amazing.”

Kanan takes a bite of his own roll, and they chew in companionable silence.

But with the next bite he moves the sandwich closer…and closer…until she’s forced to take bites so big that she can hardly speak around the food to mumble, “Why are you doing this to me?” He’s grinning and she’s laughing helplessly, crumbs shooting from her mouth. In her cockpit. Yuck.

“Because I don’t think there’s a limit to how much you’re willing to bite off!”

He tries to pass it off as a joke, but it’s not really, and suddenly this sandwich is a metaphor and not at all funny anymore.

She frowns at him, but he can’t see it. She can’t _say_ anything for a solid minute, but when she finally swallows that sithawful bite, she simply says, “Kanan.”

And he waits, because neither of them is sure whether she’s extending sympathy or rebuke.

“Kanan, I—”

“No, I’m sorry Hera, that wasn’t fair. I…don’t think we can do anything differently. What you’re doing is right. And I wouldn’t leave this cause, even… Well, no matter what.” He frowns, perplexed. “And anyway, the only way out is through at this point.” His mask covers his face so she can’t see the muscles around his eyes, but his mouth has that pressed look. He’s thinking about the fact that one day they won’t make it through. Determined to see out the day no matter how long or lonely.

 _We’re not there yet_ , she wants say. _We’re HERE. This isn’t the endgame yet and you don’t have to be so sad and alone._ She wants to tell him: _Take off that mask. It’s just the two of us. I wish you would let me see your face._ But the mask and the sadness are his business, and it isn’t her place to decide what makes him comfortable.

Instead she squeezes his hand and holds it. “Let’s just keep flying together, okay?”

He nods, a tight thing that doesn’t look satisfied.

“What, love?” Hera asks.

“It’s nothing. It’s foolish. I just…wish we had more time together.”

She could say: _Life won’t always be this busy_. She could say: _We’ve been together for eight years, and I’m not even thirty yet._ She could say: _Remember 22? We’ve come a lot further than we thought we would._

Instead she says: “Me too.”


	6. Waste Not, Want Not

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They have almost everything they need, Ezra reflects.

Yavin IV is covered with fruit. Rebel leaders worry a little about damaging the ecosystem, but really it’s a big moon, and as long as they’re careful not to forage all from the same spot, anything they take is minimal.

So the refrigeration unit on the Ghost stays jam-packed with more than they really need at any given moment, and its crew isn’t used to how quickly jungle fruit goes from ripe to liquid. They stuff their faces. Hera pulls five things from the unit at any given meal—especially the few when they’re all together instead of cramming in a bite at their separate work stations. “Eat this,” she says. “It’s about to go bad.”

Someday when Ezra and Kanan are far away and missing home, empty stomachs and empty packs, Ezra will hold out the last rotten rind of their food very seriously and tell Kanan, “Eat this. It’s about to go bad.” Kanan will give him a disapproving frown, and they’ll both laugh themselves helpless.

But right now they’re here, and sometimes together, and rapidly getting sick of all this fruit.

It’s kind of idyllic, though Ezra has no illusions that the calm will last. They’re still smarting from Atollon, and he can’t shake the frustration of having to abort the Lothal mission. But they’re here in this green place, and the dynamic is familiar and sometimes boring, and they have everything they need for once.

Mostly he misses Sabine with a pain so intense it borders on grief.

He tells himself this isn’t reasonable. She’s fine. She’s just off helping her family. You know—her family. He’ll probably see her again soon. I mean, she’s half a galaxy away and nothing’s fair and she’s busy with important things, but maybe.

There’s an empty spot at the table and he just wants her to be here.


	7. Comrades

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crappy situation, good people. Zeb knows the score.

Their arrival on Yavin IV is heralded by lice.

Not just the regular kind of lice that crawl around and stick to your hair and breed like mad. Oh no, these have to be _space_ lice, and those little devils just don’t die. One of the rescued soldiers from the Phoenix Home has tromped them onto the Ghost, which is…just great.

Chopper and Hera don’t understand the urgency, and Ezra, with his new haircut, is hardly in a panic. But Zeb… “Do you know what it would be like if those buggers got on me?” he asks. “It would be…disastrous!”

“Okay, okay,” Hera placates him. “We’ll spray for them. _I’ll_ spray for them. If it’s really as bad as you say, just get off the ship. We can bunk somewhere else for the night.”

It’s the absolute worst time to be without a bed. Thousands of Atollon survivors are streaming into the Yavin base—injured, displaced. They all need beds, and nobody on Yavin expected anything like this.

The Ghost crew end up sleeping on a bunch of mats in a large room, along with a couple hundred other people all from the batch they arrived with. Great. One of them is probably the lousy culprit.

“Goodnight, Zeb,” Hera tells him, arranging her boots under her head.  

“Does that make a comfortable pillow?”

“Just making sure nobody leaves a practical joke in my boot. I know this crowd.”

“Huh. Good idea.”

Kanan stirs at the noise, then settles again when Hera lies down with her back to his.

And then an Imperial uniform catches his eye because, well, Imperial uniforms do that. Kallus, taking clipped, measured steps across the room with a standard issue bedroll under his arm. Alone. Of course alone, because he’s everybody’s enemy in a base of comrades. He pauses in front of Zeb, looks down at the data pad in his hand, and looks back at Zeb. “I seem to have been stationed next to you.”

Stationed. Zeb gives himself points for not sniggering. “You been de-loused yet?”

Kallus blinks. “Pardon me?”

“Just go walk through the Ghost and shake your head around. That ought to do it.”

“Garazeb.” Hera doesn’t even bother to open her eyes.

“Awww, fine, pull up a sack.”

Kallus unrolls his bedding with those same military-precise movements and lies down on his back with his arms at his sides, looking for all the galaxy like a model of human sleep. Do they train officers in the proper sleep positions, too?

And now things are weird. Because he’s rooted for this man and trusted him and…karabast, just _liked_ him for months now. And the man lying next to him is so much more formal and… and… _real_ than the snarky voice on the other end of his Fulcrum transmissions.

“Hey,” Zeb tells Kallus. “Might want to keep your boots on.”

“Clearly.”

“Well, goodnight, then. Congratulations on not being dead.”

There—Kallus hasn’t moved but that is definitely a smirk. “The same to you.”

What a bizarre galaxy. A room full of rebels, and he feels awfully safe about turning his back on _this_ guy.

Lying on his side is wicked uncomfortable—the mat digs in at his shoulder and his knee and doesn’t provide enough support for his hips. He takes a look around before settling in. Next to him, Hera and then Kanan, their backs touching, Kanan either asleep or calmly waiting to drift off.  On Kanan’s far side, Ezra’s already sacked out, lying on his back in that open-mouthed pose that Zeb knows so well. In his docking station back on the Ghost, Chopper’s keeping everything locked down. It’s a good group of people.

“Hera,” he whispers.

She opens her eyes.

“Goodnight.”

She smiles.

He rolls over and stretches his shoulders, looking up at the slate-gray ceiling in the lurid emergency lighting. Chopper. Ezra, Kanan, Hera. On his other side, Kallus, who is also the fulcrum that tipped this last battle.

Yeah. It’s a pretty good group to go out with.


End file.
